Start of 2012, March shatter US heat records

Apr 09, 2012 By SETH BORENSTEIN , AP Science Writer

In this March 25, 2012, file photo a couple enjoy a sunny afternoon against the backdrop of the Midtown skyline from Piedmont Park in Atlanta. The lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with both March and the first three months of the year far exceeding the country’s old records.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

(AP) -- It has been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records were not just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records.

The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the U.S. has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming. One climate scientist said it is the weather equivalent of a baseball player on steroids, with old records obliterated.

"Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good," said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist who specializes in extreme weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "It's a guilty pleasure. You're out enjoying this nice March weather, but you know it's not a good thing."

It's not just March.

"It's been ongoing for several months," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

Meteorologists say an unusual confluence of several weather patterns, including La Nina, was the direct cause of the warm start to 2012. While individual events cannot be blamed on global warming, Couch said this is like the extremes that are supposed to get more frequent because of manmade climate change from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

It is important to note that this unusual winter heat is mostly a North American phenomenon. Much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has been cold, said NOAA meteorologist Martin Hoerling.

The first quarter of 2012 broke the January-March record by 1.4 degrees. Usually records are broken by just one- or two-tenths of a degree. U.S. temperature records date from 1895.

The atypical heat goes back even further. The U.S. winter of 2010-2011 was slightly cooler than normal and one of the snowiest in recent years, but after that things started heating up. The summer of 2011 was the second warmest summer on record.

The winter that just ended, which in some places was called the year without winter, was the fourth warmest on record. Since last April, it has been the hottest 12-month stretch on record.

But the month where the warmth turned especially weird in the United States was March.

Normally, March averages 42.5 degrees F across the country. This year, the average was 51.1 F, which is closer to the average for April. Only one other time, in January 2006, was the country as a whole that much hotter than normal for an entire month.

The "icebox of America," International Falls, Minnesota, often the nation's coldest city, saw temperatures in the 70s F for five days in March (30s C for four days ), and there were only three days of below zero temperatures all month.

In March, at least 7,775 weather stations across the nation broke daily high temperature records, and another 7,517 broke records for night-time heat. Combined, that is more high temperature records broken in one month than ever before, Crouch said.

In a paper that NASA's top climate scientist, James Hansen, submitted to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted on a physics research archive, Hansen shows that heat extremes are not just increasing but are happening far more often than scientists thought.

What used to be a 1-in-400 hot temperature record is now a 1 in 10 occurrence, essentially 40 times more likely, said Hansen. The warmth in March is an ideal illustration of this, said Hansen, who also has become an activist in fighting fossil fuels.

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When we had record cold the winter before last I saw the AGW believers say you cant take those numbers into account because it was only a bump in their trend. Now with unusual warmth this winter they want to use these numbers to support their AGW theory. I guess some can have it both ways and take which results they want to use to prove their case.

Such high temperatures actually don't support any theory, because in AGW hypothesis the average temperatures cannot raise in such fast way. It can be a fluctuation in similar way, like the relatively heavy snows and low temperatures during last winter. It's true, the theory of global warming predicts the elevated frequency of weather fluctuations, but the onset of ice age could manifest with such extremes of weather as well. These fluctuations could simply follow every dynamic climate change, not just global warming.

"If there's so much evidence why does NOAA have to behave like this?" - GregorTard

The fact that the presentation comes from the Libertarian propaganda organization the Competitive Enterprise Institute, tells you all you need to know about the honesty of the presentation. Specifically that there is no honesty in the presentation.

The CEI is one of the most dirty and dishonest organizations in the U.S.A., and it exists exclusively for the purpose of lying in support of the corporate takeover of America, and the enslavement of the American people.

They broke previous daily records by 8 to 20 degrees day after day for about 15 days in many of the midwest and northern plains states.

Also, the island of Svalbard broke record high max and mins every day for something like 13 days out of a 15 day stretch, and that's just last time I bothered keeping up with it, and some of the record breaks were by 5C or more.

Look how WARPED an unnatural this is, especially in the Gulf and North Atlantic.

The water off the coast of New Jersey and Delaware was almost 5C above average for an entire week, and it was like this last year and the year before. It will probably stay like this, give or take a degree, until September or October or later, just like last year and the year before.

do you have any freaking idea how much extra heat that is compared to the climatology average?

Lake Hudson's southern ice is just now starting to break up, so it will be a month or so behind, but the past few years, Lake Hudson and the Great Lakes was also about 5C above average for many consecutive months. This has become the new "normal".

It, by definition is natural....unless God did it. Calm down, take a pill or something before you have a stroke. There are always going to be statistical anomalies. YOU are the ones who were saying to ignore the recent cooling as it was WEATHER and not CLIMATE. Anything less than 30 years...I'm just doing the same.

Well climate is defined as the long-term prevalent weather conditions. I don't consider a month long term. So THIS article is IDIOTICALLY written if it's trying to compare the temperature records for one month to climate...period.

Well climate is defined as the long-term prevalent weather conditions. I don't consider a month long term. So THIS article is IDIOTICALLY written if it's trying to compare the temperature records for one month to climate...period.

You're the one being absurd if you're suggesting otherwise.

Um, climate isn't just about annual averages. who ever told you that?

Climate is also about what is normal for any given period of the year, for a given location and a given data set, i.e. rainfall, snow, min and max temperatures, number of hurricanes per month, etc.

But if you insist on 30 year periods, well, the 24 hottest years on record happened in the past 30 years. That's basically 3 solar cycles, so don't blame the Sun.

If you're waiting for a string of 30 consecutive years to be all 30 of the hottest years on record, well hopefully that doesn't happen, because if that happens it would mean the forcing itself is larger than seasonal or annual noise.

"It, by definition is natural....unless God did it. Calm down, take a pill or something before you have a stroke. There are always going to be statistical anomalies".

Well MM, to be argumentative, it would still be natural if God did it as God would also be part of nature....sorry, I miss Kevin.(NOT)The problem with "statistical anomalies" is that they appear to be growing in frequency and intensity. We are outside the window of natural variability on this whole climate thing as human impact has pushed the factors affecting climate beyond it. Most models predict these "statisical anomalies" as part of a warming climate. I would say we should attempt to get used to them.

What used to be a 1-in-400 hot temperature record is now a 1 in 10 occurrence, essentially 40 times more likely, said Hansen.

This is all you need to know to understand the article. It means that temperatures tend to cluster around a gaussian (bell curve). If you shift that gaussian to the right, i.e. hotter, then rare events at the right hand edge become dramatically more likely. So a good way to look for global warming is to record the statistical frequency of these events, and if it increases, then global warming is having a direct impact. I found a nice illustration of this: http://www.csa.co...mean.jpg

It's important to point out that is atmospheric temperature, not total global atmospheric, water, and phase transitions heat budget.

Every evidence is global ocean temperatures at depth are warming continually, ice is melting(heat of fusion,) and humidity, convection, and water vapor is on the rise(heat of vaporization).

the "false negative" feedback caused by increased convection in the Arctic enhancing snowfalls (caused by record hot ocean heat content) will be totally over-whelmed by CO2 and albedo feed-back in about 10 to 20 years.

One of the reasons February and March could have cooling trends or snowfall records is because the insulating ice in the arctic is thinner and less area than before, which increases convection and causes heat loss..

"On average, warmer-than-normal temperatures were observed across most of North America, most of northern Europe and Asia, and southern South America. "

The above is a bit contradictory to the cherry you picked from the same article.

"People are so stupid. This is global cooling, not global warming."

Really....

The truth is: It's been an unusually cold Northern winter. North America's warmth only provided a minimal counterbalance.

The 3 week negative shift in the AO which caused the Euro/Russian cold snap is the only reason the average winter temperature this year is .019 degrees C cooler that last year. This cold snap provided a massive counter balance....did you change your name to "people"?

Pleasant temperatures in February, March, and April won't doom anyone.

It's those, you know, year 2100 to 2200 having 130f to 140f Summer days in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, maybe even eastern Montana and the Dakotas and parts of the Midwest, that are going to be a SERIOUS damn problem, particularly in the areas that are not immediately down-wind from a large lake or ocean.

Continental extremes increase much faster than global averages, particularly in the interior far away from bodies of water.

And who knows, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, etc may experience 10f change in average max summer temperatures.

Fortunately for most of us on this site, we are probably all going to die of old age or some other cause before it gets quite that bad.

But our children, grand-children, niece, nephews, etc? Well, they are going to get a raw deal.

that is the observation that continental atmospheric temperature extremes can change much more quickly than oceanic atmosphere temperature extremes. Since 3/4 of the world is covered by Ocean, the "global average temperature" is heavily weighted by the less-easily changed temperatures over waters (due to the high heat capacity of the water itself, and other factors,) which has less effect on humans in most cases.

But again, when the feed backs start turning the breadbasket and all the other prime farmland into a partially desertified wasteland, then maybe some of you guys will get the picture.

this took about 6 to 8 thousand years to happen in Africa during a global average temperature change of just a few degrees.

It can happen again, and on other continents, unfortunately, and in this case potentially much, much less time involved.

I'm very tired of all the deniers out there misunderstanding science and math. If you're so confident in your position, put your money where your mouth is. I suggest an international effort to create a "climate futures" market, aka climate betting. I will put all of my meager savings up against the money of all the deniers out there. That's how confident I am in science. If you're equally confident in your rhetoric, you'll surely jump at the chance to take money from a fool like me, right? Bets will be on specific items such as "summer 2012 will be in the top 10 hottest summers in recorded history", etc. I'm sure all the deniers will make a fortune because their position is so solid and secure. And if you don't want to put up (your money), then kindly shut up.

5333 temperature records set in a single day in the U.S. A North American winter without winter temperatures, that "ends" with a week of summer temperatures.

And if they kept records for each town it would be hundreds of thousands, and if they kept records for each plot of land it would be millions... this 5333 number you're quoting is irrelevant, it depends only on the size of the areas keeping record.

It's also worth noting that there would have been zero records set if our records went back for more than a millisecond in geological time.

It was the coldest winter in about 15 years, I think, which means it was still warmer than the long term average.

Svalbard and other locations broke many, many record high temperatures.

They had about 1 or 2 weeks of cold weather, as well as a few extreme precipitation events which were, of course, caused by the absurd jet stream configuration and the absurdly warm Arctic SST near Svalbard...

When water temperatures increase, average convection increases by about 4.5% for every 1f of temperature increase.

The oceans near Australia were about 1C to 2C, or 1.8F to 3.6F above average temperature in most areas, which means, you guessed it, increased convection and cloud cover.

This would tend to lower day time maximum temperatures significantly on the ground, but by the time you take into account the heat content of water involved, the total heat capacity was probably much higher.

Also, being the "coldest summer in 16 years" is media mis-representation of information when presented in this context, since as I showed, the 16 hottest global years happened in the past 17 years. So being "colder" than the 16 hottest years on record isn't exactly...cold, now is it? She also rounded up 1.5C to 2C for a seasonal average, which is a HUGE misrepresentation for weather and climatological purposes.

It's important to point out that is atmospheric temperature, not total global atmospheric, water, and phase transitions heat budget.

"The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the DecemberFebruary period was 0.41°C (0.74°F) above the 20th century average of 12.1°C (53.8°F), making it the 17th warmest such period on record and the coolest DecemberFebruary since 2008."

"On average, warmer-than-normal temperatures were observed across most of North America, most of northern Europe and Asia, and southern South America. "

The above is a bit contradictory to the cherry you picked from the same article.

No it's not. You cherry picked regional temperatures vs. global temperatures. There's always going to be regional differences, as the Earth is too big to have a homogeneous temperature.

The 3 week negative shift in the AO which caused the Euro/Russian cold snap is the only reason the average winter temperature this year is .019 degrees C cooler that last year. This cold snap provided a massive counter balance....did you change your name to "people"?

Uh, did you not understand the definition of "counterbalance?" Of course they balance against each other (duh!). So, it seems apparent you're one of the "people" in question.

Unless I'm a turkey sandwich, the European model appears to believe a Tropical or Sub-tropical storm is going to form in the central Atlantic on the 16th, at about 28N, 55W, and then dissipate on the 19th at 28N, 60W.

The extra-hot ocean has more evaporation, almost 9% per 1C of excess heat of water.

This evaporation makes water vapor rise into the air, where it mixes and cools. Some of the excess heat at high altitude is radiated away. The clouds that form provide an increase in Albedo, which provides a negative feedback. However, these don't offset the total heat gain, they just help get rid of some of it.

At night time, however, clouds actually provide positive feedback, causing heating, because they trap infrared radiation which is heat re-radiating from the Earth's surface. So as you can see, increased convection is a mixed bag...

As for melting, when we pass the first complete August/September meltdown of Arctic Sea ice, there will be no more heat of fusion of ice for a heat sink, and the surrounding water (and atmosphere) will be able to warm up much, much faster...

It's those, you know, year 2100 to 2200 having 130f to 140f Summer days in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, maybe even eastern Montana and the Dakotas and parts of the Midwest, that are going to be a SERIOUS damn problem, particularly in the areas that are not immediately down-wind from a large lake or ocean.

Then how come they were nice and green when the world was much warmer in the past?

The extra-hot ocean has more evaporation, almost 9% per 1C of excess heat of water.

This evaporation makes water vapor rise into the air, where it mixes and cools. Some of the excess heat at high altitude is radiated away. The clouds that form provide an increase in Albedo, which provides a negative feedback. However, these don't offset the total heat gain, they just help get rid of some of it.

All you're saying is; if the water gets warmer, the air gets cooler. So how does the water get warmer to begin with?

All you're saying is; if the water gets warmer, the air gets cooler. So how does the water get warmer to begin with?

I didn't say that.

You're too damn stupid and dishonest to understand what I said, apparently.

So the deep sea magically pulls all the CO2 induced warming out of the atmosphere now? How does that work?

The laws of thermodynamics.

Excess heat will tend to try to distribute itself uniformly among a fluid (although hottest materials also rise vs gravity, so its not ideal.)

And sea levels have been dropping recently. So, how does that work exactly?

Unlikely.

What's more likely is you are referring to a denialist site which has some fabricated or mis-represented data.

NASA has radar data and GPS data and other data which proves Greenland is melting by the annual average of an excess of at least 100 cubic km per year, and surveys by Europeans have estimated it may be as much as 380km per year.

All you're saying is; if the water gets warmer, the air gets cooler. So how does the water get warmer to begin with?

Several ways:A:1, GHG trap more infrared which was re-radiated from the atmosphere or from land, this warms the atmosphere.

2, If the atmosphere over the ocean is warmer than the water, thermodynamics requires heat to be transferred into the water through contact.

3, Ssome of the heat from CO2 which collides with non-ghg in the atmosphere is then re-radiated, when this happens, there is about a 50/50 chance that the re-radiated infrared will be directed back towards the surface, where it hits land or water again...

B:

Melting otherwise permanent sea ice and lake ice decreases albedo, causing radiant forcing which heats water to a depth of several hundred meters, believed to be in the 700 to 900 meter range by the time you count ocean currents, etc. The difference in solar heating for open water and ice-covered water is a couple hundred WATTS per sq meter.

what you need to realize is that the down slump was mostly a hiccup and is already back on an upwards trend.

You can't throw out decades worth of up trend over one down anomaly.

If you look at 1998 on that chart, there is a similar size down anomaly, ok not quite as big, but it was corrected and the upwards trend resumed over the next year or two.

Considering we had two very, very large Earthquakes in Chile and one in Japan during 2010 and 2011, it's also possible the Earth's axis shifted enough to screw up the satellite reference points by several millimeters.

Either way, you can see most of the down anomaly has already corrected itself and resumed it's upwards trend.

A one year to 18 month reset, so what? There's been two or three of those already on the line.

A down anomaly once in a while is a welcome sight, but not statistically significant over the long term.

Sorry, that wasn't it. There was massive flooding in Australia and elsewhere. And the flood waters saturated the soil. That water is slowly flowing back through the soil to the ocean and as it does, the ocean level is rising to it's previous levels.

You can already see the ocean levels rising as the water has been returning over the last half year or so.

"Considering we had two very, very large Earthquakes in Chile and one in Japan during 2010 and 2011" - Lurker

The long term slope of the warming actually exceeds the slope of the keeling curve on this scale, which is consistent with the notion that positive albedo feed back further enhances warming above and beyond CO2.

I have been informed that after certain limits are met, it takes about twice as much additional CO2 to cause the same amount of additional forcing, which if you look at 50 year trend, the last 15 years CO2 and temperature trend are nearly parallel.

It's important to understand that we are still in the backside of the end of the most recent ice age, so yes, temperatures will rise and ice will melt and sea level will rise... this is expected if you look at the geologic history of this planet and the cyclical history of the ice ages.

GHG trap more infrared which was re-radiated from the atmosphere or from land, this warms the atmosphere.

2, If the atmosphere over the ocean is warmer than the water, thermodynamics requires heat to be transferred into the water through contact.

You do know that water is abut 829 times more dense than surface air, don't you? And the heat transfer coefficient between them isn't so hot (pun!) That means, given equal volumes, it takes a buttload of atmospheric heat to nudge the temperature in the water. Mostly, the heat transferrred into the water would simply return to the atmosphere via evaporation!

Earth's oceans are primarily warmed by direct exposure to sunlight (and to an uncertain but arguably small extent, mantle convection/volcanic activity).

Notice how rapidly it rose from 1983 to 1998, then it plateaued starting in 1999 through about 2006, seven years, and then resumed rising.

This plateau in the Methane curve may explain some of the plateau effect in the temperature curve.

and you might also notice that nearly half of all Arctic sea ice volume loss in the past 33 years actually occurred since the Methane plateau ended in 2006.

That's not to show a cause and effect relationship, but it does show a correlation, as during the Methane plateau, the average annual net loss of minimum sea ice volume was typically about 100 to 200km. After the plateau ended, the average net loss of minimm ice volume was 1000km per year.

And the reason I made the paragraph at the end is because the melting of ice in the Arctic may have actually ended the plateau in the Methane Curve, not the other way around, since we know for a fact that record sized methane torches have been happening there for at least the past two years...maybe they've been happening all along, except during the plateau, and just weren't detected, because they didn't do enough research in the right locations...

Officially, the reason for the plateau is unknown and is not explained by any measures any government has taken for "clean energy," etc.

Do you think that the slower rate of melt will prevent coastal cities all around the world from turning to modern day versions of Venice?

Does this have anything to do with anything or is it simply an appeal to emotion?

Long before humans and the industrial revolution the Earth has continuously experienced vast climactic changes that completely reshaped the planet on a regular basis. Whatever paltry effect we might be having will utterly pale in comparison to what will happen in the future with or without us. When 2/3 of the Earths surface is covered in 100 meter thick ice in about a thousand years we will be begging for global warming, and that's not a mere prediction, we have vast quantities of evidence that this period of glaciation is extremely regular, likely the result of astronomical processes as natural as the passing of the seasons.

So it having been a La Nina winter has absolutely nothing to do with anything because it has no affect on climate right?

By the way, if you count up the use of words like retard, idiot and stupid then include ad hom. attacks and accusations of "congenital" lying you might see something interesting about the spread between the two camps.

To what "denialist position" do you refer? I've never stated the world hasn't warmed. I've only stated there appears to be a 14 year long disconnect between atmospheric CO2 content and warming.

Because the "temperature" of the Earth is not exactly the same as the "heat" of the earth, due to phase changes, as I explained earlier.

In the past 14 years the Arctic lost 9200 cubic kilomters of Sea Ice and Greenland lost somewhere around 3000 cubic kilometers of glaciers, just estimating from memory and depending on who's data you use.

this heat comes from the OCEAN, because thermodynamics transfers heat from water at 1C to ice at 0C, etc.

Melting 1km of ice reduces the temperature of about 80km of water equivalent by 1C, thereby temporarily off-setting "temperature increase" in the ocean.

If you start with 1km ice at 0C and 80km water at 1C, you get 81km water at 0C, but the HEAT content is the same.

Mutually reinforcing Milankovitch cycles will take any affect that the entire human race has or will have on this planet and counteract it ten-fold as if it were nothing. We are ants, the tiny effects we may have are a concern for our well being alone, we are doing nothing to this planet in the grand scheme of things.

Floods hitting Cambodia since August have killed between 60 and 100 people. 90,300 families in 15 provinces have been affected; around 170,000 hectares of rice fields and 63,000 homes are under water.

New Devastating Pakistan Floods

This week will be one folks in the D.C./Baltimore area remember for a long time when it comes to flooding rain. The event has had it all: urban flooding, flash flooding and river flooding -- all over multiple days, impacting many communities.

This plateau in the Methane curve may explain some of the plateau effect in the temperature curve.

and you might also notice that nearly half of all Arctic sea ice volume loss in the past 33 years actually occurred since the Methane plateau ended in 2006.

That's not to show a cause and effect relationship, but it does show a correlation, as during the Methane plateau, the average annual net loss of minimum sea ice volume was typically about 100 to 200km. After the plateau ended, the average net loss of minimm ice volume was 1000km per year.

If you throw an ice cube in a bucket of water, the ice will melt and the water will be cooled, but the total heat content of the ice plus water is the same either way.

Ok?

But wait, CO2 don't stop rising just because we melted all the ice.

Now that the ice is melted, satisfying thermodynamics tendancy to transfer heat to the cold reservoir (the ice), well now TEMPERATURE can continue to rise.

When land-locked ice melts and the run-off water is colder than the ocean water, at 0C or so, it "cools" the ocean, as far as a thermometer is concerned, but the total HEAT content of the hydrosphere actually went UP by a significant amount.

Then Greenhouse effects and albedo changes continue to push TEMPERATURE up over the long term.

the "false negative" caused by a phase change absorbing huge amounts of heat does not change that fact.

Floods, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, thunder storms, earthquakes... we live on a very active planet and we should be thankful for that or we wouldn't even be here. These things happen almost every day somewhere on Earth, to cherry pick specific areas of the world that are experiencing higher than average occurrences while ignoring areas of the world that are experiencing lower than average occurrences is to intentionally deceive people into thinking that the sky is falling.

"Mutually reinforcing Milankovitch cycles will take any affect that the entire human race has or will have on this planet and counteract it ten-fold as if it were nothing." - DeathTard

Why do you feel a need to lie about such things, Tard Boy?

When the Milankovich cycles are self-reinforcing they cause glaciation... you think humans have prevented the next glacial cycle? For all the times you childishly call people "tards" you really act the part sometimes.

Because the "temperature" of the Earth is not exactly the same as the "heat" of the earth, due to phase changes, as I explained earlier.

In the past 14 years the Arctic lost 9200 cubic kilomters of Sea Ice and Greenland lost somewhere around 3000 cubic kilometers of glaciers, just estimating from memory and depending on who's data you use.

this heat comes from the OCEAN, because thermodynamics transfers heat from water at 1C to ice at 0C, etc.

Melting 1km of ice reduces the temperature of about 80km of water equivalent by 1C, thereby temporarily off-setting "temperature increase" in the ocean.

If you start with 1km ice at 0C and 80km water at 1C, you get 81km water at 0C, but the HEAT content is the same.

NOW the 81km can be further heated by AGW...

So where did all this Greenland ice-melt-water go?

What's happening now? Did you know the sea around the Arctic and Greenland is on the chilly side this year?

"to cherry pick specific areas of the world that are experiencing higher than average occurrences while ignoring areas of the world that are experiencing lower than average occurrences is to intentionally deceive people into thinking that the sky is falling." - DeathTard

Now that the ice is melted, satisfying thermodynamics tendancy to transfer heat to the cold reservoir (the ice), well now TEMPERATURE can continue to rise.

But wasn't the ice melting all along? What changed 14 years ago?

When land-locked ice melts and the run-off water is colder than the ocean water, at 0C or so, it "cools" the ocean, as far as a thermometer is concerned, but the total HEAT content of the hydrosphere actually went UP by a significant amount.

Then Greenhouse effects and albedo changes continue to push TEMPERATURE up over the long term.

the "false negative" caused by a phase change absorbing huge amounts of heat does not change that fact.

How can it be a false negative if the temperature of the entire system is accounted for (not just one part or the other).

What's happening now? Did you know the sea around the Arctic and Greenland is on the chilly side this year?

Did you know Antarctic sea ice is increaasing?

Antarctic sea ice extent and area is increasing about 1% per decade right now, but that is insignificant compared to the warming of the oceans. There is a reason for this.

the sea ice volume in Antarctica is being melted below the surface by the warming southern ocean waters.

By the way, the southern ocean is warming to a depth of 3000 meters by about 0.2C to 0.3C per decade, some of this heat ends up melting Antarctic sea ice.

Now if you want to play around with spacial analysis, its very easy to take a cube of 2 units per edge, cut it into 8 smaller cubes and remove 3 of them. You just reduced volume by 3/8, but surface area of the top horizontal surface increased from 4 to 5.

How can it be a false negative if the temperature of the entire system is accounted for (not just one part or the other).

You really aren't even trying to understand the mechanics of this, are you?

It's a "false negative," because the temperature will resume increasing once all the ice is melted. The "Temperature" experiences some DECREASE as the ice is melting, even as "heat" stays the same or goes up slightly, but once the ice melts there is no longer any phase change buffer to store more heat...the temperature resumes rising.

but once the ice melts there is no longer any phase change buffer to store more heat...the temperature resumes rising.

If true, so?This has happened many times before as well as several ice ages in between.A recent article on phyorg asserted conservatives like the status quo. Who would have thought AGWites were conservative and feared change?

Finally, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the Southern Hemisphere is about 10 to 20PPM lower than in the Northern Hemisphere, simply because it takes that long to mix, and because most of the CO2 is produces in the Northern Hemisphere.

In 5 to 10 years, when the southern Hemisphere CO2 concentration catches up to what the present day Northern Hemisphere concentrations are, then your 1% per decade gain in sea ice area around Antarctica will almost certainly go negative. That is, by 20 years from now I'd expect to see 10 years of average net negative in Antarctic Sea Ice area, though it may happen sooner than that.

The Southern Hemisphere's Methane curve also lags behind the Northern by about a decade.

Care to guess what happens when both curves catch up with present day N. hemisphere, and then N. hemisphere has meanwhile increased by a further 10 years worth of gains?

And its not just March that has been warm this year. Overall, the first quarter of 2012 was the warmest on record.

The warmer than average temperatures in March also created a severe weather setup that helped spawn 223 tornadoes in a month that averages just 80. The majority of the twisters happened during a March 2nd-3rd outbreak which killed 40 people. The total losses from the severe weather is expected to exceed $1.5 billion dollars.

5333 temperature records set in a single day in the U.S. A North American winter without winter temperatures, that "ends" with a week of summer temperatures.

No one in living memory has ever seen anything like this before.

It is weather, but it is statistically anomolous weather. Exactly what the climate models predict.

Again, that 5333 number is completely meaningless. Had every household kept these records the number would be in the millions. Had the records only been kept by each state the number would be in the 30's or 40's. Had our records extended back for any significant amount of time in the history of this planet then no records would have been set at all.

The warmer than average temperatures in March also created a severe weather setup that helped spawn 223 tornadoes in a month that averages just 80. The majority of the twisters happened during a March 2nd-3rd outbreak which killed 40 people. The total losses from the severe weather is expected to exceed $1.5 billion dollars.

Are you also going to mention areas of the world that saw LESS extreme weather than they do on average, or does that information not advance your agenda?

How can it be a false negative if the temperature of the entire system is accounted for (not just one part or the other).

You really aren't even trying to understand the mechanics of this, are you?

It's a "false negative," because the temperature will resume increasing once all the ice is melted. The "Temperature" experiences some DECREASE as the ice is melting, even as "heat" stays the same or goes up slightly, but once the ice melts there is no longer any phase change buffer to store more heat...the temperature resumes rising.

You're not getting it. If you take the temperature of the ice and the water separately, and calculate them together into a measurement of the system, you'll get the same answer as if the ice was dissolved into the water to begin with. The system temperature isn't affected by melt "false negative" or otherwise.

No it's not. You're comparing the surface area of 3D geometries to 2D geometries.

No, I wasn't. You just don't have the spatial reasoning to see what I did.

If a 2by2 cube is floating in water and it breaks up to 8 1by1 cubes, then you have 2 times the surface area above water. Now if 3 of the cubes melt, you have 5 units of surface area vs the original 4, but less ice volume total...

Localized Antarctic sea ice "average thickness" says nothing since we know from satellite that entire ice shelves have disintegrated within the past several years. You're making absurd cherry-picks that just don't fit the overall picture.

Finally, the Arctic sea ice is NOT recovering.

Ok, seasonal recovery, yeah, but it does that every year this time of year, so what?

The volume is about the same that it was last year this time, which was an all-time low for the month...

Finally, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the Southern Hemisphere is about 10 to 20PPM lower than in the Northern Hemisphere, simply because it takes that long to mix, and because most of the CO2 is produces in the Northern Hemisphere.

In 5 to 10 years, when the southern Hemisphere CO2 concentration catches up to what the present day Northern Hemisphere concentrations are, then your 1% per decade gain in sea ice area around Antarctica will almost certainly go negative. That is, by 20 years from now I'd expect to see 10 years of average net negative in Antarctic Sea Ice area, though it may happen sooner than that.

The Southern Hemisphere's Methane curve also lags behind the Northern by about a decade.

So why isn't the Antarctic melting like the Arctic did 5 - 10 years ago?

So, VD thinks that Ice Ages have only been occurring for a mere 3 million years, and he thinks that humans have completely ended the cycle with our tiny bit of CO2 that pales in comparison to the natural output of CO2 through natural processes over the history of this planet.

I'm sorry, I don't like to reduce myself to his level, but he is a tard.

If nothing else it means it's hotter than it has ever been in human history, at least on a planetary scale.

Do you realize the existing models of projected temperature rise typically don't even attempt to take into account the Carbon bomb from the Arctic clathrates and permafrost?

Why?

Because there's so much of it that it's not clear what the mathematics of the calculation should be.

When they give a 1 to 3C or a 2 to 4C at 2100 projection, that is under the assumption that a carbon bomb doesn't happen, because nobody knows exactly how to figure for that, because it's an event you can't know ahead of time how big its going to be or when it happens.

When it does start to happen on a globally significant scale, it will produce a self-reinforcing CO2 feedback which will pretty much run the CO2 concentration up indefinitely until all of the carbon is released from it's reservoirs...

There is between 200PPM and 400PPM equivalent of CO2 in the arctic permafrost, which is 2 to 4 times more than what humans have put in the atmosphere.

So you see, the man-made CO2 forcing is going to destroy the natural balance and release all of this stuff in probably a few decades. Though some scientists say this might take centuries. Whatever the case, it won't be good for humanity, that's for damn sure.

I wonder how hot it will actually be if Earth reaches 800PPM CO2? 1000PPM?

Hey, we'll get to 600 to 700PPM by the end of the century, even if the carbon bombs never happen, at the present day rate of consumption and ignoring population growth and standards of living increases....wow...

In years prior to 2007, most of the decreases were relatively small, particularly if you used 5 year running averages to smooth out the anomalies.

So what you see is that as you are just barely passing a threshold, i.e. 1998 to 2002, the average changes are very small, but once you hit a certain limit, i.e. 2006-2007 year, the changes are huge and continue at a drastic pace through 2011.

This principle will occur in the Antarctic.

At first, any positive trend in ice will disappear.

Then, the negative ice trend will start slowly for 5 to 10 years, and then it will just plummet, much like what happened in 2007. It won't be exactly the same obviously, but that's just a general guide.

I guess in your view an increase in the murder rate must be fake if there are fewer driving fatalities.

"Are you also going to mention areas of the world that saw LESS extreme weather than they do on average" - Death Tard

Idiot.

I don't think you know how to read because this didn't address my point... You mention an area of the world with a greater than average occurrence of extreme weather... but other parts of the world experienced less than average extreme weather... averages are just that, averages. Violation of an average is not meaningful in and of itself, and you only put forth the data that supports your agenda and intentionally ignore data that does not.

I don't know why I bother with you, you act like a child with your name calling, I feel dirty getting in the mud with you.

When cornered by factual evidence, all Conservatives - like DeathTard here - begin to lie as he has just done by dropping the word "regular" from my response.

I have never encountered a Conservative who wasn't a congenital and perpetual liar.

"So, VD thinks that Ice Ages have only been occurring for a mere 3 million years" - DeathTard

They've been regular for hell of a lot longer than 3 million years as well, the data you linked to simply ended at that point... are you one of those people that think the end of the mayan calendar is significant too?

I'm also not a conservative, I'm an atheist, I am for gay rights and I am pro choice, I'm as social liberal as they come.

But keep illustrating your stereotyping and your other ignorant tendencies, it only helps me discredit you.

So you see, the man-made CO2 forcing is going to destroy the natural balance and release all of this stuff in probably a few decades. Though some scientists say this might take centuries. Whatever the case, it won't be good for humanity, that's for damn sure.

What makes you think so? Have you ever tried to plant crops in permafrost? It simply can't be done.

You sound like the Christians pointing to hurricanes and tornadoes and claiming that we are living in the end times and that Jesus is coming soon... Weather happens, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc all happen. You're running around shouting "The sky is falling the sky is falling" without looking at these things in the context of the 4.55 BILLION years that the Earth has existed.

The volume of ice above the water does not change below, but Lurker is correct, the surface area does.

"If a 2by2 cube is floating in water and it breaks up to 8 1by1 cubes, then you have 2 times the surface area above water." - Lurker

Idiot. that's not what he said. What he said was:

Now if you want to play around with spacial analysis, its very easy to take a cube of 2 units per edge, cut it into 8 smaller cubes and remove 3 of them. You just reduced volume by 3/8, but surface area of the top horizontal surface increased from 4 to 5.

That's a good analog of antarctic sea ice.

The reason this is false is he's not accounting for the uplift from all the ice originally below the waterline (making it a BAD analogy for Antarctic sea ice). These five cubes will have about the same surface exposure above the waterline as the original cube did. Sure it's not only the horizontal surface area, but so what? Sea ice doesn't break up into neat little cubes.

Then, the negative ice trend will start slowly for 5 to 10 years, and then it will just plummet, much like what happened in 2007. It won't be exactly the same obviously, but that's just a general guide.

Sorry, but no. First of all, the mechanics between the Arctic and Antarctic are completely different. The Arctic melt occurred because of warm ocean currents and prevailing winds. These currents do not exist around the Antarctic (it has an isolated circumpolar current). And the prevailing winds can't push solid rock out to sea.

Also, the trend for diminished Northern ice started long before 5 - 10 years ago. We should see it diminishing now. It's not.

Correct, it was regional, and global temps have been reasonably cool this winter as a result of LaNina.

But it is not the average temperature that is of interest here, it is the extremes in the weather observed over that last 4 months.

Extreme cold in Europe.A winter without a winter in North America.

The issue here that you continue to purposely ignore is the increasingly extreme weather that is being experienced globally.

So maybe you think I should be afraid of the weather now?

You did see where I showed you the IPCC found no link between property damage an AGW, didn't you?

"The IPCCs Special Report on Extremes, released March 28, reads, 'There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized [property] losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.'"

The earth's climate system is chaotic, with the climate state orbiting one or more attractors. As chaotic systems are perturbed by external forcing the orbits of the system are perturbed and will eventually find themselves nearing other potential attractors around which the system can orbit.

Proximity to new attractors will cause the system state to diverge radically from it's initial orbit, and there will be wild swings in it's state, and if the perturbation is large enough the system will switch from orbiting one attractor (state) to orbiting a different attractor that has a radically different state.

The more energy you pump into the climate system, the more extreme the system becomes until there is a radical change in the mode of the climate.

This is how chaos works.

"You sound like the Christians pointing to hurricanes and tornadoes and claiming that we are living in the end times and that Jesus is coming soon" - DeathTard

In many (but not all) regions with sufficient data there is medium confidence that the number of warm spells or heat waves has increased since the middle of the 20th century (Table 3-2).

and a more extensive quote from 3.3.1:The AR4 (Hegerl et al., 2007) concluded that surface temperature extremes have likely been affected by anthropogenic forcing. This assessment was based on multiple lines of evidence of temperature extremes at the global scale including the reported increase in the number of warm extremes and decrease in the number of cold extremes at that scale (Alexander et al., 2006). Hegerl et al. (2007) also state that anthropogenic forcing may have substantially increased the risk of extreme temperatures (Christidis et al., 2005) and of the 2003 European heat wave (Stott et al., 2004).

On precipitation (3.3.2):Based on evidence from new studies and those used in the AR4, there is medium confidence that anthropogenic influence has contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale.

The 3 week negative shift in the AO which caused the Euro/Russian cold snap is the only reason the average winter temperature this year is .019 degrees C cooler that last year. This cold snap provided a massive counter balance....did you change your name to "people"?

Uh, did you not understand the definition of "counterbalance?" Of course they balance against each other (duh!). So, it seems apparent you're one of the "people" in question.

Apparently I should have highlighted the word MASSIVE so that it wouldn't be missed by the unobservant...you said the counterbalance was minimal, as with most of the drivel you posted, that is incorrect. Examining the overall temperature average for the northern hemisphere this past winter doesn't provide a true picture because of the extreme temperatures experienced at different locations...it's also pretty funny that you can't wrap your head around the ice volume vs. ice extent debate. You must be NotParker.

The size of these numbers have more to do with the number of individuals keeping these records than they do with the weather. If every single American citizen kept a log book of these weather records then you could say that hundreds of millions of records were broken in March.

If we had records further back than a millisecond in geological time then ZERO records would have been broken in March.

You are abusing numbers to deceive people, and I don't think you're intelligent enough to even realize it.

"If we had records further back than a millisecond in geological time then ZERO records would have been broken in March."

March didn't exist before humans...and it won't when were gone. Your comment about the Milankovich cycles is also total speculation, I speculate that the opposite will happen. We HAVE negated any cooling the cycle would have produced , or amplified the warm portion of the cycle. The main signal in the cycles is 100,000 year, most scientists agree that the intervals inside the 100,000 year are greatly influenced by solar insolation @ 65 degrees North Latitude and that factors of terrestrial origin carry the most influence on the smaller cycles inside the 100Ka cycle. There are also orbital cycles Milankovich simply wasn't aware of regarding orbital plane that have come to light more recently, which also affect climate to a lesser extent than the factors he used to calculate the cycles.

If every single American citizen kept a log book of these weather records then you could say that hundreds of millions of records were broken in March.

You don't understand the point.

A large number of the record breaks were not ties or half degree breaks or 1 degree breaks. The were 8 to 23 degrees above the PREVIOUS RECORD and often 30-something to 40-something degrees above average, and in most cases the previous record had been set in the past 15 years...

If every single American citizen kept a log book of these weather records then you could say that hundreds of millions of records were broken in March.

You don't understand the point.

A large number of the record breaks were not ties or half degree breaks or 1 degree breaks. The were 8 to 23 degrees above the PREVIOUS RECORD and often 30-something to 40-something degrees above average, and in most cases the previous record had been set in the past 15 years...

In many (but not all) regions with sufficient data there is medium confidence that the number of warm spells or heat waves has increased since the middle of the 20th century (Table 3-2).

Break out the piña colada, Woohoo!

and a more extensive quote from 3.3.1:The AR4 (Hegerl et al., 2007) concluded that surface temperature extremes have likely been affected by anthropogenic forcing. This assessment was based on multiple lines of evidence of temperature extremes at the global scale including the reported increase in the number of warm extremes and decrease in the number of cold extremes at that scale (Alexander et al., 2006). Hegerl et al. (2007) also state that anthropogenic forcing may have substantially increased the risk of extreme temperatures (Christidis et al., 2005) and of the 2003 European heat wave (Stott et al., 2004).

Old data. You did hear about the record cold and snow since, haven't you?

On precipitation (3.3.2):Based on evidence from new studies and those used in the AR4, there is medium confidence that anthropogenic influence has contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale.

You afraid to get wet?

What happened to the much ballyhooed extreme droughts and desertification?

Apparently I should have highlighted the word MASSIVE so that it wouldn't be missed by the unobservant...you said the counterbalance was minimal, as with most of the drivel you posted, that is incorrect.

What I meant by that was, the North American warmth was insufficient to make a this winter particularly warm globally (as opposed to the last 14 years).

Examining the overall temperature average for the northern hemisphere this past winter doesn't provide a true picture because of the extreme temperatures experienced at different locations

Unusual weather happens, but the energy for the whole system is what's in discussion when discussing global warming. The energy of the system was a bit on the cool side.

...it's also pretty funny that you can't wrap your head around the ice volume vs. ice extent debate. You must be NotParker.

I find it funny you didn't understand my objection was for the poor quality of the analogy.

"Terrestrial net primary production (NPP) quantifies the amount of atmospheric carbon fixed by plants and accumulated as biomass. Previous studies have shown that climate constraints were relaxing with increasing temperature and solar radiation, allowing an upward trend in NPP from 1982 through 1999. The past decade (2000 to 2009) has been the warmest since instrumental measurements began, which could imply continued increases in NPP; however, our estimates suggest a reduction in the global NPP of 0.55 petagrams of carbon. Large-scale droughts have reduced regional NPP, and a drying trend in the Southern Hemisphere has decreased NPP in that area, counteracting the increased NPP over the Northern Hemisphere. A continued decline in NPP would not only weaken the terrestrial carbon sink, but it would also intensify future competition between food demand and proposed biofuel production." - Science 2010

"Why do so many of the denialists constantly cite articles in crank websites?"http://notrickszo...ia-laws/Because science requires transparency and reproducibility a fact axemaster, that you apparently deny. Are scientists that break the law to hide their methodology at all plausible in their conclusions? Please, people, don't believe me , watch the video and make up your own minds.

"Terrestrial net primary production (NPP) quantifies the amount of atmospheric carbon fixed by plants and accumulated as biomass. Previous studies have shown that climate constraints were relaxing with increasing temperature and solar radiation, allowing an upward trend in NPP from 1982 through 1999. The past decade (2000 to 2009) has been the warmest since instrumental measurements began, which could imply continued increases in NPP;

Warming stopped in 1998. Consequently, it makes sense that greening has stopped too.

People don't understand the scale of geologic time... I heard once that if the entire history of this planet were represented as a mile long road humans have only existed for the final half inch, and the industrial revolution would be a microscopic sliver from the end.

Our "records" are a complete fucking joke. The temperature extremes that this planet has experienced, cyclically, tens of thousands of times in it's history would make your head spin.

The emission of CO2 from natural sources absolutely dwarfs the contribution from humans.

The sky may be falling Chicken Little, but it's not the first time and we are not the cause.

Hi! The industrial revolution has made humans COLLECTIVELY one of the most powerful 'natural' forces on the planet. Read all about what we have done and wonder. Introducing hot food into old-fashioned ice box forces more violent TRANSITION 'equalising' convection currents. And once the ice block melts there is no extreme 'equalisation', so the icebox warms up overall. A pot of water on the stove goes only slowly to boiling point while TRANSITION convection equalises the hotspots to the coolspots. When no more cool water then the pot boils and we see even more violent 'heat exchange' TRANSITION processes take place. Think more extreme/frequent local and larger scale storms/cyclones moving heat from surface to upper atmosphere. When no more ice cold air from melting polar ice available, those extreme TRANSITION storms become mild, and hardly any mixing/equalisation occurs. After this equalisation/transition process is over, we will know what 'warm' really is! Cheers anyway!